


Refract

by AlastorGrim



Category: Iron Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Asexual Character, Biblical References, Dark Peter Parker, Dark Tony Stark, Implied Sexual Abuse, Lust at First Sight, M/M, Mercenary Peter Parker, Obsession, Oneshot, Rivalry, Sort Of, Superior Iron Man Vol 1. (2015), Two Shot, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Who Would Win, Wingfic, implied self harm, lots of references, the world may never know, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2020-07-09 03:06:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19880578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlastorGrim/pseuds/AlastorGrim
Summary: What if our favorite, insane Spidey got launched into Superior Tony's dimension? Well, he's not going to play the hero, that's for damn sure. But Tony certainly wants to play with him. Whether the Spider will let him remains to be seen.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing Bug Bytes (Starker) and Bruises (Spideypool) around the same time, and this was what became of it. Though this isn't specifically Bruises Spidey. I just couldn't resist sticking my two favorite villains in a room together~

It was an oversight on his part.

A _grevious_ oversight.

An oversight that was costing him time, money, and _popularity_. Unacceptable. Time was annoying, money was dispensable, but someone had publicly defaced his name. On his own damn building.

Unacceptable.

Tony stared up at Stark Tower with a scowl that could melt titanium. Several jittery, frightened PR agents and employees fluttered around him, not daring to get too close. At least they weren't that stupid.

"Who did this," Tony seethed. No one answered him for a beat, and his fury skyrocketed. "Who did this? I want a fucking name!" He roared as he whirled on the fidgety interns, who scattered like bowling pins in the face of his rage.

"W-We don't know, sir," A random employee in a lab coat stuttered. "The c-cameras were s-sc-scrambled, sir; they didn't catch the perpetrator. But the criminal did leave behind this." She shakily extended a black slip of cardstock, and Tony snatched it from her.

He flipped the flimsy strip of paper over to reveal a bright red spider printed in the center of the black. His lip curled up into a sneer. "A spider? Is this supposed to be a calling card?"

The woman swallowed. "With all due respect, sir," She pointed a trembling finger up at the message splattered across the stainless steel and glass of Stark Tower in drying blood, a body staked beneath it. Tony unwittingly followed her gaze. "I think that's enough of a calling card."

**_He's Gone_ **

**_STARK _ **

**_Ravin' Mad!_**

Tony snarled, "I'll find this bastard. And when I do, they're going to wish they'd never been born."

•🕸️•

Rumors of a mercenary called the Spider littered the darknet like candy wrappers. Attestments to his prowess, curses to his name, shaky accounts of his insanity. It was enough for Tony to put together a profile, but not enough to get an actual name.

The Spider had popped up in the merc community about six months ago, by the looks of it, and began to carve his name into the world with numerous bodies in various stages of dismemberment. Statements said that he hung around a regular haunt for mercenaries all the way in New York, but no one had ever seen his face, nor heard of a name beyond the one used as a title.

"What the hell was a merc from New York doing in San Francisco? Besides fucking up my building," Tony growled as he ripped ruthlessly through firewalls and code locks in search of more to go on.

When further digging yielded nothing, Tony nearly flipped the table over in a fit of anger. Instead, he dug his fingers deep into the lacquer his desk and drew in a deep breath. Tapping the bracelet on his wrist, Tony stood and rolled his shoulders. "JARVIS, clear my schedule for the next week. I'm going to New York."

"Shall I reschedule your meetings for next week, sir?"

"No. I wasn't going to go to them anyway. Send Pepper and her complaints to voicemail," Tony drawled as the symbiotic metal slunk up over his chest and secured itself into something solid.

"Of course, sir."

Then Tony was off to stomp on a pest.

•🕸️•

Tony Stark walking into Sister Margaret's was like a lion strolling into a herd of sheep. The entire bar immediately went silent, tension and _fear_ thick and cloying on the back of his tongue. Tony strode across the room with easy confidence until he reached the bar itself. The crowd of unwashed murderers parted for him like the Red Sea for Moses.

Shaggy, dirty blond hair hung over thick coke bottle glasses to tangle in an even dirtier goatee. Bloodshot eyes of an unidentifiable color glanced lazily up at him. An almost imperceptible flash of tension twitched through the bartender's body, before it slumped back into a nonchalant slouch. "Can I help you, Wall Street?"

"Weasel, is it?" Tony drawled, the picture of relaxation. "I'm looking for a friend of yours."

"Friendship is for toddlers and Bronys," Weasel sneered. "Whoever you're looking for, they aren't here. Now run along back to your supermodel orgies and Extremis campaigns. Unless you have a fetish that makes you make want to rub elbows with us peasants, that is."

"Oh, but I would just _love_ to get up close and personal with a certain arachnid of yours. Because he's already rubbed me all kinds of the _wrong fucking way_." Tony lashed out a hand caught Weasel by the collar of his hoodie. Almost every patron in the bar pulled a gun on him, and a few even shot. Tony glanced back dispassionately with half-lidded eyes as the bullets ricocheted off his force field and sought their way back into their owners' skulls. Six people dropped to the floor of the bar, dead. Tony sniffed and turned back to Weasel, whose calm facade had abruptly abandoned him. "You have three days to get the Spider to come to me in San Francisco, or I burn you and your establishment to the ground, understand?" He said darkly.

Weasel had gone pale, faintly green, and he looked half a second away from puking as he nodded rapidly. Tony released him and wiped his hand off of his pants with a grimace.

"Good. Three days, and then I come after you with war on my heels. Don't disappoint me."

Tony left the bar behind him and straightened out his three-piece suit with a huff. He flicked his wrist and the surveillance device he'd implanted in Weasel's phone flared to life. Sure enough, not five minutes after he'd walked out of the bar, the Bluetooth in his ear flared to life.

" _Wes! What's the occasion? You calling to congratulate me? I've gotten several thank you notes in the mail these past few days—I'm famous!_ " A voice considerably younger than Tony expected chirped.

"You are an absolute fucking idiot that's going to get me killed," Weasel snarled back. "Do you know who just walked into my bar?"

" _Kesha!_ "

"Tony _Stark_ , you fucking crazy bitch," Weasel hissed. "Your little stunt on your last mark brought Zeus himself down on my ass. Now you have to get your ass down here and fix it before I strangle you."

The voice's jovial tone dipped into something black and sharp. " _Careful, Jackie. You wouldn't want **two** demons on your ass, now would you?_"

A falter, then Weasel seemed to shake it off and said, "Just get down here before I throw away all of your Gushers."

" _Not my fruit snacks! You monster!_ "

Tony's nose scrunched up in reproach. This was the man who'd defaced his building? Well, from the sound of it, the 'man' was a boy who wasn't really all there. Not that the knowledge softened Tony's ire in the slightest.

His bracelet pinged with a location. Tony grinned, shark-like, and let his armor slough over him once more. From there, it wasn't hard to launch up and over the few streets to where the signal was originating from. Sure enough, a brief scan of the alley displayed a man with all his organs neatly arranged outside his body on the dirty concrete. A small figure was crawling along the wall of one of the buildings, away from the scene. It was a full body suit made of black spandex, which left little to the imagination. The same blood red spider symbol that had been printed on the card marred both the back and the chest of the suit. The Spider.

Bingo.

Tony dove down towards the alley and fired off a repulsor blast just in front of the figure. Recoiling back from the blast, two slim lenses of red snapped over to glare at him. Tony slid to a smooth stop just before the Spider and hummed as the merc tipped his head at him. "Hi there, Muffet. I don't think we've formally met."

The lenses flickered at him as the Spider leaned back to lounge easily on the wall. "Nope, can't say we have. But what is formality, really? It's an outrageous concept when you think about it. After all," Here, the Spider leaned forward and his mask stretched like he was smiling beneath it. "If formal was wearing a codfish on your head, would you wear it?"

The casual reference to Alice in Wonderland reignited Tony's fury at the message left on his tower. It was obviously meant as a dig. He raised his hand to fire off another repulsor blast right at the Spider's face, but instead of looking scared, the brat just draped an arm dramatically over his face like a fainting maiden.

"Oh my, mister, please don't shoot me," He bemoaned in a theatrical southern bell impression. He fanned his mask with his other hand, only held up by his feet as he swooned. "I don't think I could take you teasing me so."

Before Tony could disperse the cloud of confusion the Spider's rambling had incited, the brat flipped off the wall and onto Tony's shoulders. One hand keeping his balance, the other reached between the shoulder slats and wrenched out a handful of wires. The suit guttered.

"Oops! Hope you didn't need those," the Spider sang as he backflipped off Tony and onto the nearest roof. The suit quickly made up for the lost tech, but it was enough of a stall for the Spider to vanish, "It hasn't been a pleasure, Stark! Buh-bye!" Called over his shoulder.

•🕸️•

Tony was _infuriated_.

He was known as the unbeatable, the untouchable, the one not to be outwitted. He was Tony fucking Stark.

And yet in his first altercation with what had to be a middle level threat, he hadn't been able to get a word in edgewise, much less actually make a move. It tore at his pride until he became _obsessed_ , tearing through archives and sending scans through voice recognition for something—something that would give him leverage.

Which he shouldn't have even fucking needed in the first place.

But no, there was nothing. Nothing but the memory of a glittery voice laughing in his ear, the stretch of black spandex over distinctive muscle that made Tony take more bedpartners than normal, growling angry obscenities into the sheets as he took everything out on his conquests—both his rage, and his lust. It left them bruised and limping away from him after, a spooked look in their eyes. It just made Tony angrier.

Three days ticked by with nothing. Then, just when Tony was fully ready to go blast Sister Margaret's into next week, about to take off towards New York, an encrypted email pinged into his inbox. It was an address.

_Do **not** tell him I gave this to you. If you can't kill him, then I don't want him coming after me. Frankly, I'm more scared of him than I am of you. I just don't want you nuking my bar.  
—W_

Tony bared his teeth in a savage grin, triumph blooming hot in his chest. The slight niggle of indignance in the back of his mind—the brat was hardly more intimidating than him—went ignored. Address loaded into his suit, he shot off towards Queens.

•🕸️•

The side of the building exploded beneath the force of the blast Tony directed at it. He flew forward and could have laughed in delight when the sound of a familiar voice cursing reached his ears. The dust began to clear as Tony ventured confidently into the rubble. A rough bout of coughing drew Tony's eye towards the far wall, which had collapsed on top of a waifish figure that was struggling to pull themselves up.

Wild brown eyes snapped up to glare at him, plush lips twisted into a snarl that bared actual fangs. "You bastard," That same shimmering voice rasped, scraped raw with pain. "You destroyed my lab!"

"You hung a dead guy from my tower," Tony replied as he made his way forward, head tipped to the side curiously.

"Oh don't tell me you're mad that I killed one of your chairmen." Doe eyes rolled as the kid shook out the dust from his curls. He had freckles. Tony drew his tongue across his bottom lip, intent. "I doubt you have actual emotions as it is. You didn't even know he worked for you, I bet," He said daringly as he twisted to try and push the wall off of him.

"You smeared viscera all over my name. Literally," Tony growled as he stalked even closer.

"If it makes you feel any better, it wasn't actually about you," the Spider drawled as he began to heft the wall up with the barest of strains. A mutant.

It decidedly did _not_.

Tony raised an arm and fired off a slip of liquid metal. It landed on the piece of wall the Spider was levering and quickly forced it back down. He wheezed as the full force of Stark tech crushed back into his chest. Tony stopped to look over the pinned bug, brow raised. He leaned down to better take in the amber shine of narrowed eyes, the sprinkle of freckles across a button nose, the endearing tangle of coffee curls draped over dark spider-leg lashes. He took in the sharpness of those bared fangs, then admired the petal pink softness of those lips. Tony wondered if he defanged the little pest, if they would grow back. More relevantly, how _quickly_ would they grow back, and if he could fit his cock between those lips in the recovery time.

He leaned down even further. "Did you really think that you could get away with defaming me?"

A wide, broken glass grin cut up at him. "What're you gonna do, big man? You gonna toss me off a building? Threaten my loved ones? I don't have any!"

Just then, JARVIS chimed in his ear, "Facial recognition scan complete, sir. The Spider's true identity is one Peter Benjamin Parker."

"Peter Parker, huh?" Tony mused with a grin. The feral amusement slid off the Spider's face, and he went pale. "Let's call your bluff, Spidey. Any extended family, J?"

"All deceased, sir. But records display what appears to be a close friend of Parker's: Harry Osborn."

Tony smirked, "Is that so?"

He expected Parker to blanch further, maybe even make a bid for his friend's life, but to his surprise, Parker just tossed his head back and laughed, long and loud and unhinged. He gasped for air in between cackles, and Tony flicked his fingers in annoyance. The metal pressed the wall down harder, and Parker wheezed out a last delirious giggle. "You think I give a single _shit_ about that piece of literal fucking human garbage? You're grasping at straws, Red Queen!"

Tony wasn't deterred. "I'd say something witty involving 'off with your head', but I've come to the realization that I don't actually want you dead," He mused as he propped his boot on the wall as well, just because he was feeling vindictive.

Parker raised an eyebrow, both wary and intrigued. It probably wasn't very often that people declared that they _didn't_ want to kill him. He searched Tony's face with eyes that had lost their earlier giddy sheen. In their place were two hard shards of topaz, much more intelligent than the madness he'd observed before. "Then how do you want me, Executioner?"

" _At my feet,_ " Tony hissed as he fired a second slip of metal right at the kid's face. It was a sedative, one that worked instantly and wore off only when the tech was removed.

Parker was out like a light.

•🕸️•

However tempted he was to tied Parker to his bed, Tony wasn't an idiot. The casual strength the brat had displayed would hardly be the only mutation Parker had up his sleeve, and Tony didn't want his house trashed. So he tossed Parker into the cell he'd created to house the Hulk, then left to give himself a congratulatory glass of Scotch, leaving JARVIS with orders to notify him when Parker woke.

Tony poured himself three fingers of Scotch, feeling like he'd caught a wild panther. He had wrangled a wild animal into a cage, a collar ready to be fastened around its neck, but the challenge of taming the beast looming overhead left a tingle of thrill in his chest.

He wanted to break Parker, to weigh down his limbs until he could lift nothing heavier than a butterfly, to cut up his sharp tongue beyond repair, to pry out his fangs and carve away the stores of venom likely resting in his jaw until he was nothing more than a pretty bauble for Tony to admire.

(There was a small part of him—very, very small—that lamented that Peter would become disgustingly boring should he lose those things. That suggested that he cap the fangs instead of removing them, just to let Peter try to bite him, try to end him, and watch that sweet face blossom in rage when nothing came of it. Wanted to hear him curse and watch metal twist beneath those delicately small hands as he railed against Tony, oh so _powerful_ and yet oh so _his_. Fashion a sign that read 'Beware of Spider' because a pet he wanted but a beast he'd gained. See those amber eyes burn up at him because that helpless rage was a thing of _beauty_. The part of him that acknowledged that part of Peter's appeal was that he was a beast, a monster, and Tony wanted to make him _kneel_.)

(Not that he would ever admit it.)

"Sir, Mr. Parker is awake." JARVIS intoned, a bit ruffled if Tony was reading that tone correctly.

"Awake and lively, I assume." Tony tossed back the rest of his drink and wiped the corners of his mouth with his fingers as he made his way back down to the cell.

JARVIS didn't answer, but he didn't need to. Tony came in sight of the cell just as he heard a loud bang echo down the hall. Peter had apparently thrown himself at the wall. They held up, of course. The brat may have super strength but he was no Hulk.

He stilled when Tony came closer, poised to leap again at the walls, fangs bared. Though the window into the room was mirrored, Peter's head snapped to the side and focused with startling accuracy on Tony. Slowly, he straightened out of his crouch and turned towards the mirror. His head tipped, puppy-like.

"Do you think you can hold me?" Came the soft inquiry with an innocent blink of those doe eyes.

"Yes, actually." Tony didn't bother with the microphone. The kid's senses were enhanced—he could probably pick out Tony's heartbeat through the four foot reinforced concrete. "I'm doing it right now."

"You're letting your technology do the holding _for_ you," Peter spat back. "Because you know you aren't man enough to grapple with me face to face."

Tony's lips twitched. "Does goading usually get you what you want?"

Instead of getting angry, or denying the blatant manipulation tactic, Peter smirked at him, amused. "Yes, actually. Wes can't stand it."

The gleeful note to his voice made something in Tony's chest flicker. He drew his tongue along his bottom lip in thought, wondering. "So what are you, Peter Parker?"

He, of course, meant the mutations. He had never seen a mutant that could do what the Spider could do. He could stick to walls, he could spin actual webs, he could lift things easily ten times his own weight, not to mention his bite was most likely lethal. Almost all mutations manifested in a latent gene of some sort, one that had to be put under stress to become active. The gene was not all-encompassing. It gave one gift, and no matter how powerful, it was still only one. Peter had at least five.

But Peter didn't take it that way. He beamed at Tony through the glass and began to him to himself, swaying in place to a silent rhythm. "I am what happens when an angel falls from the sky. I am what happens when goodness realizes that good and evil do not truly exist. I am that one that dared to ask why a God sits on his throne, and lead a third of his children down into the chasm with me." He drew his arms sensually up his sides, cupped his throat, and ended with his hands tangled in his messy curls. He grinned at Tony, eyes half-lidded, taunting. "Do you think yourself a God, Stark?"

The conversation he'd had with Murdock rang in his ears like the high of a church bell. A damning, indisputable truth.

"No use thinking when I know," Tony drawled, heart thudding calmly in his chest. But Peter seemed to hear the flutter of his excitement anyway, known what he was thinking, because his grin widened.

"Mayhaps this was supposed to be the ultimate battle!" Peter tossed his arms high. He began to twirl across the room, light on his toes, humming erratically. "God versus Man! Or, well, it would have been, had poor Daredevil been up to the task. But alas, he fell to the temptation of sacrificial miracles—the taste of the rainbow! Let's call him Skittles from now on, yeah? But if Man won't kill God,"

Peter slung to a stop in front of the glass, a small palm smacked up against the glass, and it cracked. The Spider grinned, predatory.

"Then the Devil will do it."

Adrenaline flooded Tony's veins, made his teeth buzz in expectation—an urge to _bite_. "Are you forgetting Revelations?"

"Hardly," Peter trilled, ecstatic. "I don't need to win to ruin you, baby. I can the devastation to your reform! Besides, I like you much better than the other one. A Martyr. Please." His eyes rolled as his fingers scraped along the hairline fissures in the glass which had, until that moment, been bulletproof. "But you're not him. You're not Jesus—you're Judas. Ready to sell out the world for a few slips of paper that ultimately will amount to _nothing_. You are...pure greed," He breathed, enraptured even as his eyes darkened.

"And you think you can stop me? You're a child," Tony sneered, but it was a front for the surge of angry hunger that had roared to life in his chest. He ached with the need to press his fingers around that pale, flawless column of flesh and stain his mark upon it. Take that odd, rapturous insanity and breathe it into his lungs. Brand it back into Peter's skin with his mouth. _Mine_.

"I saw the way you looked at me, Stark. I can feel it right now," Peter sighed pleasantly as he continued to stroke his fingers down the glass. "The temptation that will allow me to strangle your empire from the inside out. Press my knives to your skin and snip it from the roots." He crooned.

"Oh please, baby," Tony purred. "We both know you don't actually give a shit about me taking over the world. You profit off other people's anger. You can't have the moral high ground. Your hands are _covered_ in blood."

Peter slammed his hand into the glass again, hard, and the glass splintered. It pierced his skin, drew blood to paint its way down his wrist. He started humming again, louder. "Hmmm, you can't fix your broken promise, our ties have come undone; your lies fool no one. You can't offer your poison to me, in your kingdom of filth," He sang, high and eerie. He grinned, fangs bared. He leaned his head against the glass, pupils blown, and looked up at Tony through his lashes as he murmured, "You're just afraid to get your hands dirty."

"Oh but I don't need to," Tony breathed, giddy. "Not when I have you to do it for me." Without further ado, Tony spun on heel and began to stalk away, back turned on Peter's sudden snarl.

•🕸️•

When Tony pulled himself from beneath the rubble of his building three days later, the Spider's farewell still sparkling in his ears, he couldn't help but laugh.

" _Forgot to tell you, I hid some bombs around here when I left Louie up there on your sign. My bad. Payback's a bitch, baby. But really, you could use some redecoration—far too much white. Red's more my color, for future reference, though I'm going to assume you knew that._ " The recording had mused, suit reaquired as black, clawed fingers toyed with the leather strip of red around his throat. He'd blown a kiss at the screen, the brat, and then the explosion behind him had cut out the feed.

Laughter rang from Tony's chest, light and toxic, and he turned his dusty face to the sky and grinned. A predator, a chase—a _hunt_.

"I'm going to fucking kill him."


	2. Corruption

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In honor of the discourse emerging into the Starker fandom for the first time (Welcome to the Shipping Jungle, Different Circus, Same Clowns) I have expanded on this verse. Enjoy 💜

The thing about corruption was that it wasn't always clean cut. People blamed society, their loved ones, themselves, but it was never just _one thing_ that sparked the flip. It was the combined force each and every one of life's failures cresting up over your head and drowning you in it until you came out the other side, soaked in revulsion and dripping with rage and just as blackened as you were when you went in, just with all your colors washed away. 

And when it was new, corruption felt _good_. It felt like _freedom_ in a weighed down society. 

But Peter had been living in the shadows long enough to know that it was like meth. The first hit was the greatest high you'd ever manage to get, and the rest of it was _shit_. But by then it didn't matter. Because you were addicted--you needed it, then.

Peter wasn't wingless. Many thought he was. Why else would the fearsome Spider need another way of flying? 

But Peter had wings. They used to be white, like some fucked up metaphor for innocence and purity and any thought of them now made him _**sick**_.

Peter had torn out his feathers in rage when he was thirteen and he hadn't looked back at them since. They laid, flightless and pinned and a leathery black against his shoulders outside his suit. The only other person to glimpse them, outside himself, was Weasel. 

Weasel had quickly learned not to bring them up.

This dimension was odd. No one had wings, and no one could fly without getting into large, gaseous planes and sitting and waiting for hours to get where they needed to go. No one else could fly of their own accord.

Well.

There was one man.

The Traitor. Judas. _Stark_. He could fly.

Stark forced physics to bend to his will with the might of his mind and defied gravity. He made the masses call him God. The Savior.

"A wolf in sheep's clothing," Peter crooned to himself in the dark of the abandoned building he had been lurking in for the past hour and a half.

It was December. Peter had left Stark something of a Christmas present--the head of the secretary Peter knew he'd been fucking. He'd left her eyes, but her tongue he'd taken. Mouthy bitch.

It wasn't that Peter was jealous. Six months after he'd come to this dimension, Stark had hunted him down and ever since they'd been at a constant back and forth. It filled the silence, but Peter wasn't as invested in it as Stark seemed to be. At least, not in the same way. 

Peter knew what Stark wanted. Knew that hunger in the man's eyes had nothing to do with bloodlust.

At times, Peter was amused by it. At others, grateful for it. And rarely, pissed off by it. But more often than not, it always triggered a sense of unease in the back of Peter's mind. Knowing what Stark's expectations were, what he thought their battles were going to culminate in--it rang within his chest like empty dissonance.

That.... wasn't something Peter was interested in. He wouldn't say he never had been, if only because most of his memories from Before were spotty. The only thing his mind ever seemed to remember about those years was pain.

Skip. May. Harry. 

Tearing his feathers out and watching as red stained white with vicious satisfaction while, " _So pretty, like a little angel, Pete..._ " echoed in his ears like a phantom cattle brand. 

Metal cutting into his throat as he screamed himself hoarse, Harry's laughter in the background gone from comforting to menacing.

It _hurt_.

Peter wondered if those instances were why he was the way he was. If the raw edges of those memories had cut him up so badly that he was beyond repair. Broken in more ways than one. 

But while Peter would like to say that he'd been fine before them, that he'd been normal, the truth was that he didn't _know_. 

His thoughts and feelings from Before were covered in a thick layer that Peter couldn't get through. The only way he'd ever been able to get into them was when White would dig around to find something to throw in his face to kick him when he was already down. 

But his Boxes were gone. Vanished. They had been ever since he'd appeared here, and the sudden silence had almost driven him more mad than he already was. 

And now that Peter needed the fuckers, of _course_ they were gone. Because Peter had never had to look at this aspect of himself before Stark. There was always a vague sense of revulsion surrounding any thoughts of engaging in such acts, but Peter had always attributed that to thoughts of Harry. 

But Peter wasn't thinking of Harry now. He was thinking of dark hair, broad shoulders, piercing blue eyes, and a jawline that could cut diamonds. He was thinking of petal pink lips, narrow hips, and calloused hands. And they weren't...bad. Stark was very aesthetically pleasing, as evidenced by his many, many bed partners. Peter enjoyed looking at him, wanted to touch him like one might want to touch something shiny that washed up on the beach.

However, when Peter caught that _look_ , it didn't invoke anything similar within him. At first Peter had wondered if it was just because Stark was male, but no, he remembered that Black Cat hadn't had much luck with seducing Peter either. 

Peter wondered if this was just another thing gone wrong with his head after Gwen had cracked like a toothpick at the end of one of his webs. Something else that drown him if he didn't learn to own it.

Like his wings. Plucked every year as feeble, stubborn feathers erupted across them, torn out again and again and again. Suffocating him in downy purity because he couldn't look at them. He _hated_ them. He would cut them off if he could bear to.

Peter flexed the blackened, leathery things behind him, and they trembled with the strain. Peter drew them back in and hummed.

"Or a abandoned, hollow snakeskin," He mused as the crackle of gunpowder alerted him to the start of the show. 

He stood upon the rafter he'd been lounging on, swung himself out a broken window, and crawled up onto the roof. He settled his back against the icy metal of the air conditioner just in time for the fireworks to start. 

New years. New beginnings. Peter'd had quite enough of them. But he did enjoy the fireworks, so you know, _win_.

Yellow would've made a joke about other 'explosive' things. White would've pondered the rationality of using fireworks as close quarters weapons. Peter closed his eyes against the red glow above him and pretended that he didn't miss them.

"A bit cold for spiders to be out."

Peter jolted. He was on his feet in seconds, whirled around to see Stark standing a foot or so behind him with an odd look on his face. Peter hadn't heard him approach. Peter _always_ heard him.

A quick inhale--no, that was Stark, he wasn't hallucinating. Peter drooped his head to the side and curled his lips into a leering grin. "This type of spider can be lured out by the sound of explosions. He's cool like that."

"You are a bit of a pyromaniac," Stark mused, that strange expression still on his face.

"Only a bit? Well now I'm just insulted," Peter replied sardonically as he edged closer to the edge of the roof. He felt too raw tonight. If they fought now, he might actually end up killing Stark. Peter wasn't sure why that concept was so repugnant. "Well, Sparky, I'm afraid I can't play tonight. I have plans and such, so--"

"I'm not here for that," Stark interrupted softly, taking a step forward. The gentleness in his voice _burned_. "Not tonight."

Peter froze, grin going rabid. "Let me guess, this is the part where we whine about our loneliness, say 'just for tonight', and then love each other sweetly? Because the way that story ends is with me waking you up with my knives to your throat. And baby, the only way you're getting out of _that_ is if you give impossibly good head."

Stark smirked lowly, and the softness in his face ebbed slightly. Peter let out a breath of relief. "Well, if you're offering, Parker..."

"Mm, did you forget that the bad ending ends in death? True spider style. Though being the current evil dictator's first lay of the year is definitely tempting," Peter hummed.

Stark's brow furrowed. A sore spot. _Bingo_. "I've created a Utopia."

"Oh, please." Peter rolled his eyes and leveled Stark with a sardonic smile. "If it were a true Utopia, people like me wouldn't exist. _I_ wouldn't exist."

Stark's jaw clenched and his eyes went hot. That was better.

Peter pressed his hand against his forehead and cackled, dolly curls bouncing jovially as he shook his head and peeked up at Stark. "Look at that! Your pride, at war with your _dick_. You want to kill me, right? Make your big boy point?" Peter crooned, grin sharpening into something lethal. "But you want to _fuck_ me more. Which puts you at a bit of an impasse." Peter widened his eyes and mocked a little pout up at him. "Poor baby."

Stark scowled, but otherwise didn't attack. Peter's disturbia spiked. 

_Why wasn't Stark fighting back?_

"You're still wearing the collar."

Peter's hand instinctively went to the strip of red leather at his throat. It was thick enough that it covered his scar. He remembered finding it on Stark's mantle before he left, wanting to try it on. Liking the quietness it settled in his mind. Stealing it despite its original purpose to demean him.

He flashed his fangs at Stark, blustering. "What can I say? Red's my color."

Stark smiled. "I think black suits you more."

"Probably." Peter tipped his head at Stark and narrowed his eyes, tense. "Why are you really here, Stark?"

"I wanted to see you. To just...look at you." Stark sounded every bit as bewildered as Peter felt at the information. "You look beautiful covered in gore, Peter, but I wanted to see you like this." He gestured vaguely in Peter's direction.

Washed out. Unarmed. Bathed in night's shawl and studded in brilliant color. 

Not the Spider. Not Parker.

Just...Peter.

For a long while, it could've been forever, they simply stared at one another. 

Then, in a flare of smeared silver, Peter was in front of Stark, crippled wings curling around the man and flaring what little they could. 

He kissed him. Stark tasted like lightning and vodka and Peter was instantly _obssessed_. 

' _Meth!_ ' Yellow would've crowed. ' _It's the meth!_ '

Peter ripped his mouth away from Stark's, a wounded noise crooning out of his throat. Like he had a _right_ \--

And then Peter was gone, leaving Stark wide eyed and breathless on the rooftop, staring at a single, ghostly pale feather drifting down before him.

Corruption. There were so many ways to go about it. 

But this...this had to be the worst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ?????? _?????_
> 
> This is??? Apparently a wingfic now???

**Author's Note:**

> There are five major references Peter uses. Let's see how many of you can get them all 😆
> 
> Edit: I finished this at two am help me sorry if there's mistakes


End file.
